By R. A. C. Parker Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War (Making of the Tw (1st First Edition) [Paperback]

The Making of the Twentieth Century

by R.A.C. Parker

A fresh, lively, but controversial account of Neville Chamberlain's personality, this book considers Chamberlain in light of British policy before World War II. Well-liked and admired by his close associates, Chamberlain worked hard, intelligently, and perceptively. Yet he arguably helped to bring Britain to the edge of disaster.Chamberlain persisted in negotiating with the Third Reich long after most other observers thought his policy had failed. He always had good reasons for his reactions. But the appeasement policy was, in fact, one of the most ambitious ever pursued by a British statesman in an attempt to remodel Europe to fit British interests.In his book Parker suggests there were alternatives to Chamberlain's policy and that these alternatives might have prevented the onset of war. Using archival documents which have only lately become available to scholars, Parker analyses the policy of appeasement and the events that led up to the Second World War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Robert Alexander Clarke Parker was a British historian, specialising in British appeasement of Nazi Germany and the Second World War. Parker was a lecturer in history at the University of Manchester from 1952 to 1957, when he became a Fellow in Modern History at The Queen's College, Oxford until his retirement in 1997.

Reviews

[Laurence Copeland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serendipity - I found this book while tidying up at home, presumably one of my son's history textbooks from 30 years ago. I dipped into it without much enthusiasm, thinking I already knew the broad outline of this period, in particular that Chamberlain was feeble, simple-minded and overawed by the dictators. As this book makes clear, nothing could be further from the truth. Drawing heavily on Chamberlain's correspondance with other political figures and, most significantly, with his sister, Parker argues that with his “enviable capacity for self-satisfaction…. His policy was arrogant, not weak or timid”. The received wisdom was correct in one respect only. Chamberlain was naive and somewhat parochial, but probably no more so than the majority of the political class of his day, with Eden and Churchill as notable exceptions. Chamberlain's confidence in his judgement about the Nazis was that “….. no government with the interests of its people at heart ….. could expose them to the horrors of modern war”. Other revelations to this naive reader were that the guarantee so reluctantly (at least on Chamberlain's part) given to Poland was intended to head off a possible Polish-Russian alliance, and that Chamberlain thought he could rely almost to the end on Mussolini to restrain Hitler ! As if....!!!
In the end, the lesson for politicians and for us all is that ignorance is not the biggest problem. Ignorance of our own ignorance is the real danger.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parker's revisionist treatment focuses on personalities, challenging Churchill's vilification of Chamberlain.